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Psychology of Music by Carl E. Seashore

Despite being written in 1938, this remains a classic text for musicians who want an overview of what it is they do as a musician along with practical advice. Highly recommended. I discuss some of the contents on this site. What is musical talent? How can you develop it?

Seashore explains that there are a multiplicity of musical talents. He identifies 10 aptitudes necessary for the performance of music. How do we learn music? Seashore explains the science behind these questions but more importantly he sets out practical and clear ways to use this knowledge.

3. The Science Of Music

Scope of the subject - The performer, the music, the listener - General principles of science - Basic principles in the psychology of music.

4. A Musical Ornament, The Vibrato

Nature of the vibrato - An example of the vocal vibrato - An example of instrumental vibrato - Frequency of occurrence, extent and rate of vibratos - Normal illusions which make for beauty of vibrato - The nature of beauty in the vibrato - - Ear training for the vibrato - Use and abuse of the vibrato - The vibrato, good. bad, indifferent, and ideal

8. Timbre: Wave Form

9. Tone Quality: Sonance

Analogy in moving pictures - Types of sonance - Sonance in attack, release, and port amento - The inside of a vocal tone - What is in a name ? - Sonance in speech - Nature of the vowel in music and speech - The problem of formant regions - Dependence of harmonic structure upon fundamental pitch and total intensity in the vowel - Conversational vs. audience voice

10. Consonance

The nature of consonance - The psychological approach - Six psycho - logical problems - Order of merit in each of four criteria - Order of rank on three criteria combined - The sense of consonance

20. Voice

21. Principles Of Guidance In Music

The problem - Paving the way - Reminiscent incidents - Principles of measurement and guidance Sources of error in guidance procedures

22. Measures Of Musical Talent

What can we measure? - Principles involved in the elementary battery of measures of musical talent - Criticisms of this approach - Purpose of the phonograph records and supplementary procedures - Reliability - The basis for rank order - The uses of these measures

23. Analysis Of Talent In A Music School

Origin of the Eastman School experiment - Plan and purpose of the experiment - Classification - Representative profiles - Stability of the classification - Retests of adults and children - Bearing on success in the college music course

24. Analysis Of Talent In The Public School

The Lincoln experiment - The Rochester service - Procedure in the guidance program - The training of teachers and supervisors - The organization of a guidance program for the public school

25. The Inheritance Of Musical Talent

The nature of the inheritance of musical talent - Basic approaches now available Possible ways of organizing investigation - The naturalist's point of view

26. Primitive Music

Musical anthropology through phonophotography - Negro songs

27. The Development Of Musical Skills

Control of pitch intonation - Control of intensity - Control of time and rhythm - The rhythm meter - Training for precision in rhythmic action - Control of timbre - - - General significance of specific training for skills

28. Musical Esthetics

Approaches to musical esthetics - Esthetics as a normative science. The musical message

Appendix
Bibliography
Index To Authors Mentioned Or Quoted In The Text
Index To Musicians
Index To Compositions
Subject Index